The present disclosure generally relates to head mounted displays, and more specifically relates to determining a gaze of a user wearing a head mounted display.
Virtual reality systems typically include a display presenting content to users. For example, many virtual reality, or augmented reality, systems include a head-mounted display including a display element presenting image or video data to a user. Content presented by the virtual reality system depicts objects and users of the system.
Many virtual reality systems present graphical representations, or avatars, of users in a virtual environment to facilitate interactions between users. However, conventional virtual reality systems provide limited graphical representations of a user. For example, avatars representing users in many conventional virtual reality systems have a single facial expression, such as a default smiling or neutral facial expression, or a limited set of facial expressions. These limited facial expressions shown by avatars in virtual reality systems often present users from having a fully immersive experience in a virtual environment.
Tracking a user's face while the user interacts with a virtual reality system or an augmented reality system may provide a more immersive interface by allowing content presented by the virtual reality system or augmented reality system to replicate movement of the user's face, providing a more immersive experience for the user. However, conventional facial tracking systems typically include a dedicated peripheral, such as a camera, as well as markers positioned on the face and body of a user being tracked. Using markers and the additional peripheral may separate users from a provided virtual environment and are ill-suited for use in a portable, lightweight, and high-performance virtual reality headset.
Additionally, including an eye tracking system in a head mounted display used to present virtual reality or augmented reality content allows content presented by the head mounted display to provide more immersive content to a user wearing the head mounted display. For example, content provided to the user by the head mounted display is foveated, so portions of the content corresponding to a gaze direction of the user is presented with a higher resolution than other portions of the presented content. However, many conventional gaze tracking systems rely on high resolution images of a user's eyes, where a significant number of pixels in captured images include the eyes of the user. Including image capture devices dedicated to images of a user's eyes is often impractical for head mounted displays that include other devices capturing information about a face of a user wearing the head mounted display.